Hoyt Alverson

Since the mid-1960's, I have conducted ethnographic research in Southern Africa and in inner-cities of the Northeastern United States. Publications on these research projects span three time periods with different foci: (1) mid-1960's through mid-1980's field research and writing on African labor migration in South Africa and Botswana. My major publication on this research, "Mind in the Heart of Darkness", Yale University Press 1978, won both first prize in the University of Chicago Folklore Competition and the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association. (2) Mid-1980's through mid-1990's socio-linguistic research on the "collocational" expression of time in four unrelated languages: English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. (3)1990's onward, research in inner cities of the Northeastern United States, principally Hartford Connecticut, on the effects of and responses to mental health services delivered in resource poor areas among Euro-American, African American and Hispanic American clients of community-based treatment centers. For listings and citations of all major publications on these and other topics please click here.